The spell of the sensuous

What Hacker News says

1. holditJan 2025
   David Abram's 1996 book The Spell of the Sensuous a good starting point.

   This was also a central theme in a lot of the late John Moriarty's work (although approached more obliquely and holistically than Abram imo). That mantle has been picked up by Martin Shaw. Both discuss how we, as a species, have domesticated ourselves out of our natural and profound connection to the very ground of our being. See also philosopher and neuroscientist Iain McGilchrist's The Master and his Emmisary.

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2. chimpanzeeJun 2024
   I agree. You should check out “Becoming Animal” and “The Spell of the Sensuous”, both by David Abram
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3. jazzyjacksonOct 2023
   women hold up half the sky. i was ignorant to a lot of suffering in the world before I read this book. very emotional read.

   spell of the sensuous. mind bending history of the alphabet, the effect of being literate on your ways of thinking and an introduction to phenomenology and our original sin of considering "nature" to be an "other"

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4. mcbishopJul 2020
   You could compare oral cultures to mnemonics (memory aids) — the more extreme the story, the easier it is to remember / recall the underlying message. That's how our brains work. I recommend a book about oral cultures (and storytelling) called: The Spell of the Sensuous.
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5. crispinbApr 2019
   I don't find the summary particularly promising. So much 20th century European philosophy seems to dodge issues of truth in favour of constructing stories of (psychological & social-cultural) motivation. But I admit to being poorly read in the field, and won't come to a judgement on the basis of a summary.

   From another angle, I enjoy (if don't quite know what to make of) David Abram's critique of the Enlightenment in his Becoming Animal and (more particularly) The Spell of the Sensuous. His target is really disembodied/symbolic thinking as such, but the Enlightenment might be considered a (proclaimed) victory of that line of human cognitive history.

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6. denomFeb 2019
   For a phenomenological treatment, see The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram.

   The idea that consciousness exists throughout the world as a gradient is not new.

   The modern industrial conception of mind (newly transformed by the technological revolution) prescribes a more limited domain for theories of the mind.

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